Disclaimer: Please respect intellectual property. This content is originally produced by me. Feel free to share if you find it useful for your loved ones by indicating its source. Do not copy or rephrase and make it your own


The popular words utilized by the beauty industry to capture the attention of consumers are becoming more advanced – from stimulating collagen regeneration, shaping facial lift to creating perfect V-shaped contour, and now products come with claim of repairing DNA for youthful skin.

Such seemingly-professional influential advertisements overturn the traditional skin care concepts, giving consumers a new hope of beauty, conquering consumers’ desire for something novel and different from the past, therefore dramatically increase the sales of the products.

Two short Q&A to summarize my article on this.
Q: “Repairing DNA” sounds really powerful. Are there research-proven ingredients that could repair DNA in the skin?
A: Excitedly, YES!

Q: So if I apply products with DNA-repairing ingredients, I can have youthful skin for sure?
A: Unfortunately, NO!

What is DNA (or Deoxyribonucleic Acid)?
DNA is a molecule that lies in each of your trillion cells. DNA in the skin cells holds the genetic instructions responsible for the growth, development, reproduction, and functioning of the skin.

Ultraviolet radiation from the sun, pollution and natural aging are common factors damaging DNA in the skin. Fortunately, depending on the types of damage inflicted on the DNA’s double helical structure (single-strand damage, double-strand breaks etc.), it undergoes self-reconstruction with the assistance of DNA repairing enzymes, via processes like base excision repair (BER) or nucleotide excision repair (NER).

DNA damage plays an important role on multiple signs of aging on the skin.

Are There Ingredients that Repair DNA?
There are research-proven DNA repairing enzymes that help repair DNA in the skin. Here’s how usually such research are conducted.
1. Take two groups – test tubes with incubating skin cells containing DNA only (control group) and test tubes with incubating skin cells containing DNA plus the test-targeted DNA-repairing ingredient.
2. Impose damage to both groups (usually raying the test tubes with UV light)
3. Carry out Comet Assay, a technique commonly use to analyse the DNA damage in individual cells.
4. If there is a significant difference between the DNA damage of test tubes with and without the test-targeted DNA-repairing ingredient, and the result is positive, then that ingredient will be considered as research-proven DNA-repairing ingredient.

Yes, such ingredients exist. But the more important question is that
Can the DNA-Repairing Ingredients Repair DNA in the Skin?

DNA-repairing enzymes do prove they reduce damage in test tube experiments. But there’s a sheer difference between theory and reality. In test tubes, those DNA in skin cells have been technically extracted beforehand; on your skin realistically, DNA is well preserved and protected under the skin surface. Touch your face now, and you’re touching the epidermis layer of the skin with keratinocytes.

Our skin, being the body’s first line of defence, is physiologically structured as a strong barrier to keep things out for protection purpose. Imagine how horrible can it be if everything you apply on the skin reaches and changes your DNA easily and conveniently.

Even if the concentration of the research-proven beneficial DNA-repairing agent is enough in the products (not like including only 0.001% yet the product advertisement sounds like the serum has full 100% of the ingredient), it can still be highly uneasy for it to reach and react with the deep DNA of the skin.

Hopefully in the next few decades, there will be newly-invented formulary delivery systems that deliver these ingredients successfully into the skin. For now, considering the price of products containing DNA-repairing ingredients is ridiculously expensive, they just don’t worth the money.

We need to protect DNA in one sense to delay the appearance of signs of aging. Besides applying costly products with claims of repairing and restoring skin’s DNA, here’s what you have to do for your skin.

How to Reduce the DNA Damage of Our Skin?
Allow us to utter the platitude again – sunscreen, sunscreen, sunscreen. As mentioned, ultraviolet radiation emitted by the sun is the biggest contributor for DNA damage. Religiously applying sunscreen absolutely cuts down DNA damage.

Next, make sure all of your products are free from irritating ingredients, which can provoke inflammatory responses from the skin surface down deep beneath the skin, damaging the cells.

You have to love antioxidants by having an antioxidant-rich diet and including serums enriched with high concentration of antioxidants in your skincare regime.

Your Sharing: Have you tried any products with DNA-related claims? How your skin reacts to them?

Cheers,
Qaph